Troy was, without doubt, one bad kid.

I don’t mean in the sense of merely disobeying his parents or finding ways to get into trouble. It went beyond that.

No, Troy was not your average, run-of-the-mill bad boy with a mean streak. He was evil.

Pure, unadulterated, evil.

I know this, because I was the monster under his bed.

He wasn’t always that way. When I was first assigned to him, though, I could definitely sense the troubled waters laying beneath the surface.

Oh, yeah, you didn’t realize that was how things worked? We’re not just some evil entities out to make lives miserable for kids. We are there for a purpose, and our assignments are carefully chosen by the higher-ups. Each of us is assigned someone we’ll be able to best attune.

That’s just a fancy way of saying we mold them into becoming better people, so they don’t end up in places they shouldn’t.

Our service is our gift to them, and we take pride when a kid grows up to be an upstanding citizen. We helped make that happen. We changed their ways by putting the fear into them, knowing something was always there, always watching, so their inmost secrets would not turn to rot and decay.

Troy… well Troy was an exception to a long-successful rule.

I tried. I really did. When I saw the pattern of his spirit emerging, the darkness festering there beneath the skin, I knew I had to do everything I could to prevent him becoming something this world would not be able to handle.

Serial killers, pedophiles, the absolute worst that humanity could ever offer started out with spirits like his, and I could not let another one come forth.

Not if I could help it.

So I did the best I could. I scared, I frightened, I made my best noises and the haunting songs. I did all the rulebook said to do, and more, to scare the child straight.

But I failed. Miserably failed.

I would follow him, sometimes, sneaking along with him, always enough of a distance away to not be suspected, hiding in the shadows in the way my kind can do best. I hated what I saw him do.

At first, it was simpler things, like throwing rocks at a dog, or kicking a littler kid when no one was looking. Even something like that could be forgiven, could be worked with eventually. It wasn’t even as if his parents had caused trauma, turning him into a bully like one might hear of. No, they were good to him, coddling his every desire and need, ever present in his life.

They were, really, blissfully unaware of the being he was becoming.

I knew, though. There was not a shred of doubt within me, and it only proved out when the killings began.

First a bird, the tiniest little thing, fallen from its’ nest and injured. Instead of picking the creature up and putting it back in place, or even protecting it in some kind of way like most children would do, Troy spent the next twenty minutes torturing the poor things. Pulling out its’ small feathers one by one, he then crushed the neck between his fingers and laughed at the way it died.

If only I could run over and stop him…

That was against the rules, though. We can do a lot of things, but rule number one is to not reveal ourselves fully, especially in the light of day. One could skirt the edges of the rule, and most of us did at times, but that was a big one.

I know, you might think it strange that monsters-beneath-beds – MBB’s – have rules of any kind, but it’s true. There are rules in everything else in life, why would there not be for us? We serve a higher purpose, too, as do all things.

Later, there was a kitten, and finally a puppy, all falling prey to this child-turned-sour.

I couldn’t fathom it, really. I had hard assignments before, but this boy was something else entirely. I was with him for a reason, and I became frightened of what that reason might be.

Yes. It’s true. Even MBB’s can be scared. If that seems strange to you, imagine how it was for me to understand the depth of what I realized I had to do.

He was due home early that day, and I was, as always, under his bed, biding my time and deep in thought from the moment he left for school. It was cold and already growing dark by the time he came into his room, the time of year and place in the world such that the sun faded into evening earlier than most parents got off of work.

Troy came in and flung his book bag to the small desk in the corner of his room, flopping himself onto his bed with a gust of breath. I’d been thinking long and hard about how to do things in a way that would not break the rules. Don’t reveal, don’t cause harm, be the conscience they need to become better humans…

They swirled in my mind like a litany, pushing hard against what I knew needed done, but not fathoming how to accomplish it.

My eyes roved, seeking something, some way, to cut through the red tape and meet my goal.

A small car lay across the room, discarded by Troy a few days ago when playing. And another object on his desk, one that gleamed with silver as the light from the lamp reflected across it.

I could do this. I had to do this.

One of the special things MBB’s can do is to cause things to reshape, to move, to shift around reality as it suited our needs. After all, one of the most frightening experiences for a child was the sight of a shirt across the room moving on its own.

I made good use of those skills.

The car slid silently along the floor, taking position only a few paces from my own face as I concentrated. Then, a small pull on the silver paper spike brought it to the floor, as well, and I moved it more to where I thought it would work best.

Troy was still above me, softly speaking as he read something. Maybe his homework. More likely that list he made of all the things he would love to do. Horrible, evil things.

I shifted myself again, bringing my hand up along the ridge of the blanket on his bed, drawing ever further upward until I reached the edge of the mattress.

Then, my hands shifted, turned, became like a long snake, and I grabbed out for the leg I sensed was there.

He squealed, a satisfying, high-pitched squawk that echoed through the room, and tried to bolt away from my grip. His leg pulsed with the effort, but I pulled harder, making him twist closer to the edge of the mattress.

Only a little more…

Finally, instinct took him over completely, and he tried to jump off the bed, to leap away from the thing grabbing at him and run.

His leg came down to the floor, and I released my grip, letting it happen.

I could feel his weight shift, the familiar rusty squeak of the springs in his bed wrenching as I backed away a little further, thinning myself out even more.

As soon as his body cleared the bed, his foot stepped on the car I left in place, and he tumbled, his arms and legs flinging askew.

With a crash, his body came down, face-first, landing on the hard floor. His breath puffed out but there was agony in the sound.

As he rolled, frantically trying to right himself, the base of the once-glistening silver spike came away from his chest, falling to the floor with a clatter as blooms of red spread across his front.

I couldn’t turn away, even while he gasped for more air, the blood rushing from the wound in his chest as his heart, somehow, kept beating, despite the piercing it just took. His eyes glossy, he fell backward again, the strength he once had quickly ebbing.

Those eyes locked on my own and I could see something there, something of the child I had once known so long ago, before murderous intent entered his heart.

It was only a few moments later his breathing stopped and I knew I could finally move on, to get away from this horrible demon-in-the-making.

See, even monsters have standards.

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Tanglewood looks like a normal city, right down to the local bakery and the daily grind. But when a child goes missing in the dangerous woods, the veil drops. Discover what happens when magic and nightmare collide in Slipped, Book 1 of the Black Rose Files.

Step Into a Mother's Nightmare

I know she noticed me.

Not in the way a rabbit might, shrieking in its tiny timidity as it tries to pass the rushes away from me. But in the way another wolf would.

A turn of the head. A small sniff. Then she rolled over in her sleep and dismissed the thought of me watching from only feet away.

I lay myself down at the edge of that clearing, my belly flush and scraping softly against the pine needles below, and my nose pressed hard into the dampened dirt.

Things were always simple. Why should they not be?

Territory. Where I tread is mine. Where I stalk is mine. What I hunt is mine.

Threats come, and I end them.

And prey comes.

They are all prey.

I end them, too.

Claws ground at the mossy earth, seeking any purchase in the roots, and the muscles in my haunches hummed, thrummed, itched to vault forward, to tear and to rend and to thrust and to crash into and crush the tiny, fragile, sleeping form wrapped within the darkened woods.

My blood screamed for it!

But the scent. Ohhh, the scent...

It drifted from her, wafting on the slow, low breeze across the dying embers of the fire I’d watched her set and lay beside, and the scent...

It was too close, too much, too much like a mirror of my own teeth and tongue, and carried that closeness. That knowledge. That aroma.

It said that metallic residue of an odor belonged not to a victim.

Something kept me still, kept me pinned, kept me with my nose buried to try to hide from it. It was something older, so much older and deeper than any hunger, and I could not move.

They were all prey.

So how was she not?

I lay there until dawn’s light first started breaking, watching her as she woke, her long, dark red hair floating back and forth as she gathered herself before she walked.

I followed, not realizing I had made a choice.

Walk and follow, paces and traces, the small and thin figure easily tracked not only by her hair but by the scent.

That scent poured from her every pore, and even in those first moments, those few long hours, I caught those first tangs of something old.

Something painfully and utterly wounded.

Not blood. No. Not that. But maybe something like the small traces of that, when it’s washed away by years of flood.

It smelled wrong.

I knew the old man was there before she did, I think. Her body shifted as he came near, and the aroma from her said danger. Said still. Said watch.

And she did.

She watched as he paced down the trail, the cane at his side rap-rapping along the forest floor, and she stayed still in the brush nearby until he passed and I smelled her muscles tense beneath her skin before she moved.

Fast. So fast. She was on him in a heartbeat, a dark metal blade singing and whipping through the air across his back and his neck, and then his chest as he spun and gasped.

The blood combined with the leaves and the grasses and his dying gasps as the residue of that wrong thing, that thing from her past, that thing that was done to her and marked her changed with the copper and meat.

I watched the kill, and everything inside me sang.

This was right, yes. This was the way of things. The order of things. The marked and damaged, drawing back what was taken, and I could feel it all in my chest like the howl I dared not release.

She moved like me. She was, in that moment, the-prey-not-prey, and I still could not explain how that was.

She breathed, inhaling the last gasps of him into herself silently as his body stopped twitching, and then she stood again and walked.

She left the trail, disappearing into the trees. Her long red hair flowed back across her again, becoming almost like a cloak, as the blade in her hand glowed with a soft red tinge.

I circled the scene once she was gone, tracing every shadow, every spark of static and that energy that makes things go, now faded from the man’s body entirely. Hungry though I was, I dared not eat of the leavings.

Something there, something in the smell of it tasted dangerous. I’d remember that trace.

I didn’t need to see her footsteps to know where she was. The depths of her scent was as bright as the fullest moon.

I followed.

She never looked back, even when I was sure she had to know I was there. She walked, she slept, and I hunted for the small things that would fill my belly just enough to go back to her again.

Every moment of all the days, I smelled her. I learned her. I knew her.

She ate little; just traces of bugs, of things dug from the ground, and of the green things her kind might call good. But it couldn’t be enough. It shouldn’t be enough.

She slept, though when she did, it was barely a rest; her body constantly moving, shifting, little mutters and sparks of something escaping her lips as she dreamed.

I couldn’t understand why she was burning herself up for whatever she was trying to do, but even at the same time she smelled wrong with it, everything told me it was right.

I didn’t see it then.

The next one came quicker, but it, too, was off.

Gone, this time, were the smell of that old pain I scented when she killed the old one.

That man had carried something with him on the wind, a richly dark tone of past blood on his own hands, maybe.

This one? This was another thing. It was as if her own mark, the old scars, laid upon him, and I knew before she moved she would end him, too.

No, I did not sing in my chest for this one, for everything about it told me, even if, deep down, something in her actions felt right, my nostrils told me it was not.

Her face, her certainty, the joy she held, and the glow of her cheeks after he lay dead at her feet screamed she was not hunting. This was not a kill for food, nor a death for the stench of vengeance. Oh, yes. That has a stink all its own, and my kind know it well, because they hunt us for it when we need to feed and take one of theirs.

She moved in the same way she had before, her shoulders releasing in ease and her eyes spoke satisfaction... and then a veil covered those orbs and she moved away.

But she was still power. She was still control. She was still something my kind know in our guts when we savor the ones who lead, and I still could not understand why.

Commitment.

Certainty.

Leading.

She, in that moment, had been absolute, and I am less so. And that is the order of things.

I followed.

I hate that I followed.

But I followed anyway, because my claws would not allow me to dig into the dirt and stop.

The fetid wrongness grew ever stronger as another kill, and another kill, and another kill fell as prey to her blade and her cries and her hatred and her joy.

I can’t say how I know the violation of it was there. Something deep, something so deep within that I have never before known its touch, told me it was wrong, even as I saw her be the predator and they be the prey.

My legs would hesitate as I followed her through the forest, and I tried, I really tried to just sit. Sit, stop, wait in the dark a mile behind her, and I didn’t move again for a full night and most of the next day, but she moved on without knowing I stopped.

And even as I thought I was freed of her pull, I caught her scent on the wind, and it spoke a word in the pit of me.

Come.

And my legs moved. Slowly, slowly, and then at a run.

I knew then I could not leave.

Then the next was found, paced, stalked and taken down, and I sniffed that kill as I had all the rest, and a soft sound came from my throat.

It was the first sound I’d made since I followed the red.

The prey had been young and female, and no trace of her held anything of the others. No stink of vengeance was there, and my chest faltered, knowing there was nothing to this but death for the sake of death.

And that should not be the right of things.

But I trod away, though the weight of my legs nearly brought me to the ground.

That night, I sat in the trees away from her, and I wanted to rest, or to walk away, to be freed again, but I watched instead the crackling of the flames and heavy wood and ash drifting toward me.

I sniffed, and in that moment she turned and looked toward me, toward my hidden space in the dark, and the weight of her gaze told me something...

She knew.

She knew I was there, as she’d always known I was there. No fear. This being has no fear.

She stared, and I did not move.

I couldn’t move.

Her eyes were on me, and when eyes like leaders are on you, you are still.

She knew me, somehow, in that moment and in every moment, my shadow as bright to her as if I were in the shining sunlight.

This woman, with the sometimes, in the heat of the moment, the face of a child, the pain marks within her soul crashing into all of those she felled in her furies, saw me there and was silent.

The scent of her had changed, warped by all the wrongness I’d seen and collected, and even with that, I knew she was alpha.

She stood, then, and I watched from the dark as she put her things into her basket and turned to the path again, and she said the word.

Not in voice. No. There is no need for voice. It was said in her movements and in her scent.

And I fell into step behind her as she unsheathed her blade, and the soft glow shone in the darkness, and I followed, the same as I’d been following her since the night my nose pressed into the dirt and something held me still.

I didn’t know it then.

I know it now.

She said the word, and I went.

Come.

They are all her prey.

We... are all her prey.

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Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

MORE DARK FAIRY TALES:

I climb. Every day, I climb, and I trim, and I mark the passage of time by the never-ending steps I take toward the worst mistake—and best decision—creation has ever accomplished.

The tower, taller and wider than any tree surrounding it, weighs down the earth itself, pressing further in with every passing age. It’s warm, always shifting just slightly in the breeze, but no matter how much they might wish to rest upon its cracks and folds, no bird ever alights upon it.

My steps, slow—always so slow here in this clear—brought me to the base of it, and I placed my hand upon it. My palms, flat and steady, rested on the warmth, but it gave me no peace.

It knows me. Of course it does. It always does. It warped gently beneath my skin, but not toward me. Not away either. It was the way a sleeping thing adjusts its weight a little when it senses in the depths of its unconsciousness that it is being watched.

I didn’t react, though. I never do. Not anymore. Too many days, too many ages, have passed with the two of us together like this.

Even I could not tell you how long, how many creeping things and skittering creatures and civilizations came and turned to dust while I and the tower have been joined? Since I have become its guardian, and its bane?

Too long, and too many, and I can really no longer care.

I lowered my hand, releasing the side of the tower, and grabbed my long blade. Iron. It’s always iron, isn’t it?

Deliberately chosen, but I no longer think about the reasons why. There is pain in that decision.

Three breaths.

One.

And my eyes close.

Two.

And my heart beats slow their rapid pace, the nervousness of what needed done easing, as it always does in that moment.

Three.

And the pull comes from within.

It comes from nowhere else except within the deepest part of me, a thread yanked on an old stitch that is always and ever coming apart.

It’s a part of me I can never deny, though I wish with all of me I could.

It’s the part that remembers the moment I created this thing.

And, as always, on that third breath, I almost say it.

The one thing she has always deserved to hear.

It’s the one thing I cannot say without unmaking everything I’ve built within its absence.

And again, I say it not.

I climb. Just as I do every day, I climb until I reach the spot my heart tells me is the best, the most needed, the most... dangerous.

My knife slices into the hair, cutting away fragments that were growing, ever growing, ever stretching outward with tendrils and strands, each one a new craving for someone—anyone—to give what was needed.

The strands don’t drop the way dead things do. No. They drift, catching sparkles and glints of light that have no business or reason to exist in this bedamned forest.

I don’t watch them fall, though. I learned long ago to never watch them fall.

As i trimmed, something softly sighed inside the tower.

It was not in sleep, though. No. Never that. It was aware.

I trimmed faster, knowing I should spend no more time there.

I was not yet halfway done when he came to the edge of the clearing.

I sensed before I saw. I always do. Call it a knack, if you will. I also knew before seeing him through the canopy that he was young.

Of course, he was young. They’re always so young. The old ones? They’ve been around far more than long enough to have the sense—the doubt—to stay away from this place.

Only the young have enough certainty, enough surety, and sufficient foolishness to willingly walk toward something even after you learn no other living creatures go near.

I’ve watched ten thousand of them cross that tree line, and I’ve never fully hardened to it.

The cutting done, I put the blade back on my belt and began my descent. I do not always hear her sigh beyond the hair, but maybe the closeness of the young man brought her to some awareness within.

I hate when she does. That ever-pressing compulsion to say it is always strongest in those moments when her voice is heard.

My feet touched the ground, and I did not look back, keeping to my own little rule.

Makes things easier that way... or so I tell myself.

I managed to reach him before he neared her tower. I am glad to say I always do, intercepting them before they can get close enough to feel her full pull.

If they got that close, I’d not be able to talk to them, and talking to them is important. You know? They have to know the truth, even if it’s something they never want to understand.

He grabbed his sword when he saw me. That, too, happens most of the time, though some of the wiser ones will give at least a slight pause.

This one? This one was full of all the tales of her, or, at least, what have become those tales. But those stories are true in their own way.

She really is here. She really exists. An old crone really holds her captive.

But that’s where the stories end and the tales fall apart to the truth.

He called me a witch then. That’s not really an insult anymore. It’s more like a coat I put on so long ago, I don’t even remember what I look like without it around me.

Witch. Yes. Well. If that’s what I am to you, then that is what I am. Names are merciful things, after all. They keep people from looking too close.

So, I never corrected him. I did, however, invite him to join me in a meal.

He was hesitant at the offer, probably considering how much I might try to ensorcell him with food. Maybe he’s heard rumors of fairies who will trap you in their world when you partake of their offerings.

Foolishness, all of it, but even those kinds of stories can have their merits.

Still, he agreed, and I fed him honestly.

I watched him across the fire from me and, even then, even when the time called for a quiet, the energy from him resonated with his anticipation at his quest. It came from him like heat.

As he finished, and as the last bites of my own went down, I finally told him the tower is not what the stories say.

The woman inside is not what they say.

It wasn’t the full truth, of course. No one knows that. But it was enough to watch his face darken and change.

Whenever it happens, whenever these men come with passion in their hearts and cries of war in their lungs, and they hear me tell them what’s really here, there’s always this hardening around the eyes. A set in the jaw. I’ve seen it so many times that I could easily draw it from memory.

But I don’t push. You see, you have to understand you can’t argue someone out of a story they’ve lived their lives inside.

Maybe that’s partly my fault. It probably is, if I am being honest. And I am always that, in my own way.

But what I did was ask a question. Just a single question that I know he had no answer for, because none of them ever do.

“You’ve been within sight of that tower for less than a day. Tell me true... how many times since you first saw it have you thought about nothing else?”

He stopped, hesitating, the thought rumbling around in his head as the minutes passed and the fire started to burn low.

“You have walked toward something you could not stop yourself thinking about, and you called it a quest.”

He left with the light of dawn.

I followed and did nothing to stop him. Freedom and will are everything. Never have I wanted anything else than that for those who come with songs in their breasts.

But what is in the tower... what is the tower..

I always think about her. She’s always present with me. That face, that grace I made with more care and more love than anything before or since, always and ever looking up into the sky through walls made of her own hair, waiting, endlessly, for one thing.

I could give it to her. I know I could. Three simple words I have rehearsed ten thousand times on ten thousand climbs. I know every atom of how they would sound, and I know exactly the price they would cost.

I know what matters more.

I climb.

Every day I climb.

The youth finally reached the tower, and I didn’t stop him. I let him reach it because, in that moment, I wanted to see.

I wanted to know whether something earnest and uncomplicated and freely given would finally be enough.

He put his hands on her hair and began the climb; the walls made of her strands shifted and shimmed beneath his fingers, with a solitary strand reaching out and wrapping across his wrist.

I walked to the base of the tower, too, then, reaching it when he was halfway up.

I touched her, then, too, the warmth soothing as the pull from her came again, and, for the first time in the eons of my keeping, I opened my mouth and spoke.

Not to him, still unaware of my presence, and putting one hand before the other.

To the tower.

To her.

It was barely a whisper, scraping against her hair.

“You were right. You’ve always been right. I am sorry. You are beautiful.”

The hair stopped moving.

The man found nothing more to grip and slid, slowly and softly, to the base of the tower, dust kicking up as his heels landed.

He stood there, his face painted in confusion, as he stared back up at a tower that had suddenly closed itself off completely and, for a moment, I thought he would try again.

But then he turned and walked back the way he came without, I think, really understanding why.

And inside, within the strands and shimmers, something shifted again.

Not toward escape this time, though. Toward sleep. Much deeper than before, and I turned myself back toward the place I’d called home for so long.

I’m not a witch, despite the rumors. I never was. I’ve always been much more.

But I’ve also been a fool, and a coward, and, perhaps—just perhaps—today I was something more.

Something like my old self.

Tomorrow, I’ll climb again.

But today, my sweet child Lucifer sleeps, and she finally knows I was wrong for casting her aside, and that will have to be enough for both of us to live with.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

If you enjoyed today’s journey into Original Worlds, there are ways to keep the daily stories flowing:

🚨 Subscribe right now and I will instantly send you a FREE full-length horror novel! It doesn’t matter if you’re free or paid. EVERYONE gets this book!🚨

📖 Claim My Free Horror Novel

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☕ Drop a tip in the Ko-Fi Jar: Fuel the creative chaos! As a thank you, any tip automatically unlocks a 1-month VIP pass to my paid tier.

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👑Give Me Everything

Thank you from the depths of my dark little soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.

If you were given the chance to live forever, would you take it? What if the offer came from an unlicensed Wizard?

Immortality is on the table, but the mage offering it forgot to mention the catch. Dive into a full-length adventure of magic, machines, and deadly bargains in the sprawling metropolis of Center in Clockwork Heart.

Tap Here to Read Clockwork Heart

Special Song for the story by me:

The bards sing their romantic songs about a kiss of true love breaking her eternal slumber, completely ignorant of the fact that if that princess’s eyes ever open, the world will immediately be damned.

I know you’ve heard the rumors. Deep in the forest, beyond any towns or castles, beyond the lengths most people would ever go in a lifetime, there lies a bed of roses. And upon that bed of roses, deep within the woods, lay a princess.

Her beauty, beyond any compare or question, is enough to madden the hardest of men and drive them to their knees to serve her. She is the dream, the ravage, and the apex of all things wondrous and pure.

I know those stories, too. I also know they’re a lie.

How?

Because I am the keeper of the briars that surround her bed, and have been for a lifetime.

Magic around her has thickened these forests, the metallic tang of the soil wafting up at every turn. There is a peace here, but it’s a disquieting one. A silence, but not for any somber or holy reasons.

No. It’s silent because to disturb her would be to disrupt all things we cherish.

Even the birds here do not sing. They’ve learned to avoid the briars, pulsing with their gray-red thorns jutting from every possible angle. Those briars have destroyed all life here but their own, and mine.

And they’ve done their best to do that, too. But I am their Keeper, their “trimmer,” and I’ve given over more for them than anyone else could have.

But I’ve also grown old.

The shears, those heavy iron blades touched by magic ages ago, weigh heavily when I lift them anew, each day growing more difficult, and the strain of pruning these briars is becoming more than I can bear.

Someone must, though. You see? If there is no one to do it, these briars would soon wend and weave their way across the countryside and threaten even those who consider themselves the safest.

Yes, even those in the castles afar, with their great stone pillars and walls and knights aplenty, could not stand against them. All would fall, and all would lose.

The blade across my palm ached, as it always does, but the briars must be fed, must be given their due. It’s the way it’s always been.

The vine nearest me reached out, knowing the trickles of red were spreading across my skin, and I let the thorns drink it up. Thankfully, this time, it did not try to take all, sucking up only what was there and nothing more.

Good. At least it was not as greedy as usual.

The rest of the field quieted again, the vibrating hum softening as the vine snicked back into place.

I covered the wound with a new bandage and began my walk back to the small space I considered my own, the only place within these acres of damnation I could feel safe.

It wasn’t much. It never was. But it was good enough when a fire could keep it warm against the winter nights. A blessing, those times, when the cold was at its deepest. At least, then, the blood the briars required was less.

Still enough, though. Still enough to know each moment could be my last.

I didn’t know if I could make it through another one.

I heard him before I saw him as he approached with the coming night.

Another one. Yet another one.

I crept toward the edge of the briars, keeping myself hidden to watch as he came near.

Young. Ah, he was so young. Couldn’t have been over fifteen, carrying what had to be a hand-me-down sword strapped across his back and a fire in his eyes that spoke of quests and promises.

That’s the way it always was. I sighed, knowing that boy had the songs of the romantics in his head, singing about the sleeping beauty in the forest, trapped for all eternity by a wicked witch and her magic spells.

Yet another come to prove himself against the evils of the world and become a true knight.

I knew that story well. I fell prey to it, too, so long ago.

So little I knew. So little this boy knew.

Usually, I’d let them try. That’s the important bit, you see? They come, they try, and they fail, throwing themselves against the briars.

I remember the last one, the haughty prince, who threw himself into those thorns a year ago. He tried. Gods, did he try, but, of course, there was no winning against them. They had one purpose: to feed.

I still had the golden crown that fell from his head somewhere in my little shack.

This boy, though...

I stepped out of the shadowed spot I was hidden within, slowly walking toward him as he grabbed for the sword strapped to his back.

“Wait.” I waved him toward me. “Wait. I know why you’re here.”

The vines twitched but did not grab at him. Good. Stay on this side...

“Friend or fiend?” His voice carried, though it cracked a little as he swallowed hard.

“Just a dying old man.” I tried to give him my best smile, though I was still a bit weak from my earlier sacrifice. “Please. Give me one night of company by my fire, before you claim your glory tomorrow.”

He hesitated a moment, staring me up and down, before he finally lowered his sword and nodded.

Good. Not all the old chivalry was dead, after all.

We went to my meager home, and I perched him near the fire as I made us something to eat. It wasn’t much, just some soup with a bit of the last venison I had left over from the last time I had strength enough to hunt. I intended to keep my movements soft and slow to keep him at ease, but that wasn’t as difficult as you might think to do. I really was a dying old man.

I told him more truth as we sat across from each other at the fire, sipping down the last of the stew and sipping at the cups of wine I’d passed between us.

I told him I knew the reason he was there. Nodded when I described how he’d made his way here to fulfill what he thought was his sacred quest to save the beautiful woman at the center of the forest, embraced by the thorns outside.

He nodded again when I asked him if he was sure it was the right thing to do.

However, he didn’t nod when I told him how we keepers had been the ones to spread the stories and taught the bards those original songs eons ago.

He frowned even harder as he polished his sword, eager for the coming dawn, when I said he’d been lied to.

“See, boy the truth is something else entirely.”

Those briars were not there to keep knights and squires and heroes at bay. Even as I spoke, their soft rustles and groans were sickening and wet.

They’re not a cage to keep out those who come seeking. They’re keeping something inside.

And that thing they’re carrying within is the most perilous creature the bedamned gods ever foisted upon this world.

She doesn’t sleep in a bed. She’s entombed within, and if she ever wakes, all the worlds we’ve ever known will end.

He didn’t believe me. Of course, he didn’t believe me. Why should he? The only thing he’s ever known is the undeniable “truth” of his quest. All the songs, all the lore, all said the beauty sleeping within these confines needed saving, and I was a coward and a madman.

He ranted. He raved. He held his shining sword aloft, screaming about how he was to be the one to save the princess. He was the one who was born to complete the one thing all the world knew had to happen.

He shouted I was some dark wizard trying to hoard all the glory, and I let him rant, knowing even as I’d spoken the words, it would never be enough to break a lifetime of romantic conditioning.

It happened to me, too, that night I was brought into the fold.

He did finally quieten as I sat across from him, my gaze kept on the floor. I was exhausted, but I had to let him wear himself out, to screech and cry as much as he needed, because daybreak was coming.

When the morning light finally arrived, cold and gray, he stood, tossing on his cloak and gripping his sword.

I stood too and touched his arm.

“Come. Follow me one last time.”

He surprised me when he agreed, but I was glad of it as well.

I let him not out into the briars, but through the door at the back of my hovel, where a small path lay.

Through it we went. In this place, the vines deadened, listless, darkened not with red but with black. It was the oldest space, the beginning and the end.

I led the boy down that path, the scrabbles of rock and darkened vines making a treacherous way until we came to the deepest place, where the air hung thick with choking, cloying heat and vapors.

“Why—” he started to say, and I hushed him instantly, waving my hand frantically.

I could feel his anger, a reeking sweat pouring off him as we stepped a few more paces until finally, I pointed at a narrowed gap in the suffocating thorns.

He didn’t move, and I pointed again, harder.

He looked inside.

A moment later, the sword dropped to the ground; the clank echoed lightly through the thickened air. The color drained from him as trembling started in his fingers and legs.

We remained there; him staring into the gap and I standing behind him, knowing what he was seeing. Small bits of drool seeped from his lips as the sleeping one twitched slightly as her dream shifted, perhaps only just aware of our presence so near her.

A few moments more and he fell to his knees, his mind shattering as he realized the grand illusion of his life’s single purpose was gone.

“This is why we’re here, boy.” I placed my hand on his shoulder, whispering the words into his ear. “We save the world, just not by kissing a maiden.”

“How... How is this real?” His voice broke and cracked as tears spread across his cheeks.

“Because the gods damned us long ago.” I rose once more. “Because we’re the only ones who are keeping.”

“Keeping what?” He finally glanced toward me.

“Keeping the briars at bay.”

I pulled the shears from my belt and stabbed into my gut.

The pain, immediate and immense, wracked me as I stepped close to the nearest black vine. I pulled the thing away from its brethren and huddled it to my chest.

The blood woke it in a heartbeat, and it curled around me, gripping me as tight as I held it, and the blood swelled from me with every heaving breath I took. Those breaths were copper, the metallic tang of the soil mixing with my spill.

It drank, shifting from black to pulsating red, and the humming around us swelled for a moment before quieting again, even softer than it had been before.

The boy’s gasp and groan were almost deafening, but I still clutched the thing as I crumpled. The vine, gnarled and visceral, flowed over me and the wound, each thorn tasting my blood with a deep smack. As they passed, the agony sparked, and the serpentine form gripped tighter.

Not long. Not long. Only a few breaths more; the pain was so great I could barely stand it, but I had to keep holding on, to give everything to last through the coming winter.

My breath became ragged, and I saw through the haze of agony the boy get to his feet, his wide-open mouth not saying a word.

But then he bent and picked up something glinting.

My shears. It wasn’t his sword, but my shears in his hand as he rose again.

Even with the pain, I smiled at him. Even as my vision faded away, I smiled at him. Even as he stepped away, shuffling back down the path with my bloody shears in his hand, I smiled at him.

My watch was finally at an end, and the hells-made princess could still remain, blessedly, asleep.

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